Forgiveness
by Watevs15
Summary: To err is human, to forgive is divine... Azula has a lesson to learn that only Ty Lee can teach her. Rated T for suggestion nothing explicit.


Well hello there folks! I know that I haven't updated my story _Almost Isn't Good Enough_ in forever...there are explanations that I don't really feel like explaining. Anyhow I left my notebook with the chapters I was gonna type up for it back at college on accident and since I feel bad for not being able to update during my spring break this is my apology. We'll see if perhaps I shouldn't have just said sorry instead of churning this crap out in one sitting at two in the morning. Sorry for any errors and I couldn't remember Azula's exact quotation from the party scene (you'll understand when you get there if you get there) so it's a workable paraphrase...Get over it!

Anyhow I've now rambled on way too long. Thanks for reading and review if you feel like it. Enjoy...Or else *Azula smirks in background*

Disclaimer: I obviously do not own ATLA bc if I were the amazing God-like creators of said ATLA I would come up with a better username than Watevs15.

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Forgiveness was a foreign word to her. There were just some phrases that did not so easily slip off her gilded tongue. Such was her upbringing that these weak words were never introduce into her vocabulary.

Sure some bumbling underlings had said that particular sequence of words when they had erred, but they always did so on their bellies. Azula was not one to prostrate herself in such a humiliating and decidedly inferior manner as those buffons. No, she was the Princess of the Fire Nation, the most glorious state in the world. She bowed only to her Fire Lord and the only way to seek his forgiveness was not through words but punishment. Thusly she refused to falter so she had no need of this word forgiveness.

Or at least so she had thought until a certain acrobat taught her the two-fold lesson of forgiveness

It was Ty Lee that taught her the first half of forgiveness, the act of being forgiven. Azula's jealousy, a character flaw never acknowledge but always present, flowed from her, burning one of her only friends. Ty Lee, poor weak emotional Ty Lee, felt the burn of Azula's words in her heart and attempted to squelch the flames with her tears.

The sight of her opposing element running down the cheeks of her Ty Lee tugged at a peculiar area in her chest. Perhaps it was the sight of an enemy element or more likely Azula's dislike of weakness in general that made her uneasy. Azula reasoned it must be the later, because she feared no inferior element and there could be no other explanation than the two already formulated.

Whatever the reason Ty Lee's tears unbalanced the poised princess, and Azula did not like to be off balance ever. Something had to be done. It was then that Azula realized that perhaps just perhaps an apology would dry her friend's eyes. At this point it was worth the effort.

Azula desperately lunged at Ty Lee and pulled her hands from her wet eyes. Looking at her Ty Lee in that moment a small part of her, oddly enough the part located at the epicenter of the tugging feeling, understood that maybe she was not just apologizing to alleviate her own uneasiness. Perhaps, the small part whispered, she was really seeking to heal Ty Lee's burn before it scarred. Maybe just maybe she really was seeking forgiveness and it was this epiphany that made her clutch all the tighter to Ty Lee's hands in the vague hope that perhaps a rare pleasant physical contact could relay the sincerity of a phrase she had never sincerely uttered before.

"I'm sorry Ty Lee. I was just jealous."

The tears dried up, but the tugging in Azula's chest remained. Had she been truly forgiven? Azula scrutinized the acrobat's face looking for a sign of acceptance, and there it was. In the misty grey eyes of her Ty Lee's face Azula learned what it meant to be truly forgiven.

A betrayal, the losing of a mind, an utter defeat, and a year later brought about the second part of the lesson, courtesy of a few loyal visits from the otherwise disloyal Ty Lee. If it had been slightly uncomfortable to learn the first part the second part of the lesson, the act of forgiving, was excruciating.

At first the visits from the honorably discharged Kyoshi warrior consisted of a fairly one-sided dialogue with only the ex-Princess' cast-down eyes and broken posture providing a silent reply to Ty Lee's bubbly questions.

Then finally after several visits Azula acknowledged her one-time companion by meeting her eyes. Ty Lee almost wished as she stared into the deadened brass orbs of her old leader that Azula would have continued to ignore her. This urge was short lived and only showed for a brief second in the almost undetectable narrowing of her smile before she quickly saw the benefits of being able to get through to her Princess and her smile re-widened. However Azula was no longer quite so broken in mind to not to detect what most could not, but she repressed the urge to rip that damned smile off the traitors face once and for all.

Finally after months of silence she spoke. At first Ty Lee wasn't sure if it was Azula who had spoke. She looked around the spacious room of a cell furnished with a bed, small table, and two chairs that had been provided for the disgraced ex-Princess by Fire Lord Zuko after the worse of Azula fits of madness had settled down three months into her treatment. She was trying to locate the owner of the frail and worn-out voice. It couldn't have belonged to Azula. Azula's voice was always soft, but it carried behind it the regal self-assuredness that no trumped up cackling or booming voice could begin to match. It had been her most deadly weapon. It wasn't until Azula repeated herself while the torn Ty Lee stared on that she finally had to accept that that once powerful voice had crumpled as much as its owner had.

"Why?"

Ty Lee stared at her Princess trying to understand. For her part, Azula stared right back with her shoulders drawn in and a maddened almost frenzied look on her sunken face.

"Why what, 'Zula?" The pink clad girl forced the question through her equally forced smile.

"Why are you here? What do you want from me?"

The frenzied look on the fallen Princess' face morphed into the sort of ravenous look a beggar might have at the sight of a banquet as she waited eagerly for Ty Lee's answer. It had the effect of highlighting the sunkeness of her cheeks as she was not given to enjoy eating anymore. It reminded Ty Lee a little bit of her wizened grandfather's broken form as he lay on the funeral pyre awaiting to be consumed by the merciless flames. The memory sent chills down her spine and made her realize that Azula was every bit as fragile now as he had been right at the end. There was no more time to pretend. There was only time for the truth.

"Well you see 'Zula I've missed you. Not the you that you were at the end. Not the you that I guess you are right now. I miss the you you used to be. You know, the you you were before you became so so cold. So I guess I've missed you for a while now. And the really really bad thing is that I think I'm the one who made you go away."

In a rare sign of complete shock Azula's jaw became completely unhinged. She just didn't know how to handle that answer. It was utterly unexpected. So Azula, in a moment of unguarded weakness, stuttered out: "W-w-what do you mean by that?"

Ty Lee bit her lip and looked at the floor before continuing, "I think maybe I lost you because I ran away. Do you remember the night before I ran away to the circus? I told you all about my plan and you got real upset and forbade me from ever leaving your side. I giggled and said you were acting soooo silly and that we would have each other in our hearts and then you got even angrier. You told me that I didn't understand, and when I asked what you meant you just grabbed me and well...kissed me..."

Just then Ty Lee was cut off by a wild howl of outrage. She looked up from the floor long enough to see Azula looming over her shaking with rage. Quickly she reverted to looking at the floor as if to make the image of the ghost of a spark jumping behind Azula's maddened eyes go away.

"You you you WHORE! Never speak of that again! Do you hear me? You have no right to mention that night to me...None! The things that happened, that I did...that I said...yes I kissed you and you kissed back. We did things, things that can't be undone...I I told you that I lo-loved you. You promised...you promised that you wouldn't leave! But in the morning you were gone...just like her. You left me just like my mother! Bu I suppose I should thank you. You helped me see. You can't trust people who you love. The only sure way to control someone is through fear! I became what I was always meant to be. I became a monster!"

Finally it was over. After the final exclamation the rage left her. In fact everything left her and she collapsed to the floor in a bundle of clean prison clothes, wasted muscle, and loose skin. She was too broken to cry, but the spark in her eyes drowned in the unshed tears of a lifetime of disappointment.

Ty Lee looked up from her favorite spot on the floor to find her princess, her would-be lover lying like a broken doll on the floor. And for a flash of a second she felt like laughing. Not because she reveled in Azula's pain, but for the weirdness of the situation. There, lying on the ground, Azula had finally become what she always really was: a doll. People always thought that Ty Lee was too stupid to truly understand anything, but if there was one thing Ty Lee understood it was Azula. Azula had become what she was today because she was tired of being toyed with. She became something of a puppet master at a young age to pretend that she was more than a puppet of the people who supposedly loved her. Her mother, her father, and even her Ty Lee had toyed with her. Albeit Ty Lee had never meant to, but that didn't change the facts. All of this was as much Ty Lee's fault as it was Azula's. She had to make it right. She had to tell the truth.

Ty Lee dropped to the floor and grabbed Azula. When she managed to pull the ex-princess into her lap without a fight the acrobat feared that perhaps she was too late after all. Nevertheless she had to try.

"Azula? Well I don't know if you can hear me right now, but I need you to listen now if you can. That night that I was with you was the happiest night of my life. All of it was so much all at once, even so it felt so right. And when you told me that you loved me I felt...well I can't tell you how amazing I felt. I meant it when I said I loved you. I always have. It was like a night from those stories you use to make fun of me for reading so often."

Ty Lee paused to giggle at the memory before she continued, "I really did mean to keep my promise of staying with you forever when I said it, but when I woke up before the sun rose I panicked. I didn't regret a single thing we did or said that night. Please understand that! It's just in the dark I began to worry. I know it's not like me to ever really think before or after I do something, but this was a big something! I had wanted you for so long and now I had you, but the timing was all wrong. I had to get away from my family. You know how hard it was for me with them! The circus was my chance to escape and fulfill my dreams of being a world-class acrobat."

Ty Lee knew the explanation was longwinded, but she prayed to the spirits that Azula was listening. She checked real quick to see if there was any change in Azula, but she remained the same. Ty Lee sighed, but soldier on.

"You see, I had to choose between two dreams. I know now that I chose wrong, but at the time all I could think about was being trapped with my family. I felt the overwhelming urge to just run. I had to escape! So I kissed you goodbye and broke my promise. I understand now how bad I hurt you. I betrayed you, and you changed because of that. I destroyed the girl I loved. I was selfish and wrong. I know I betrayed you again on the Boiling Rock, but I can't apologize for saving Mai. But I can apologize for making you into the kind of person that made that second betrayal necessary. I'm sorry I hurt you. I'm sorry I changed you. And most of all I'm sorry I betrayed you. I don't know if you can ever forgive me, but just know that I'm never going to leave you again. I love you because I know you are still there. I miss you and I love you. Please forgive me."

By the end of Ty Lee's confession the tears were rolling down her checks in twin rivers. She cried for her lost love. A love she feared would never return to her. As she cried the tears fell on the face of her once-lover. And then a miracle happened: Ty Lee's tears mixed with the tears of the Princess who had only cried once in her memory before. The tears flowed slowly and gently as they polished the brass irises back to their original gold. They washed over her sunken cheeks bringing back a semblance of the color that once showed beneath alabaster skin. The tears even managed to find their way to the place she had felt the tugging so long ago; the place she now recognized as her heart. They settled there filling up and patching in the empty and broken places of her heart. Finally she could see again. Finally she could feel again.

And the first thing she saw was the regret in Ty Lee's misty grey eyes. The pain and sincerity of everything she had said was laid bare in the depths of the grey irises. Azula saw only the truth on her face. She believed her.

"I forgive you."

And the first thing she felt was peace. As her forgiveness washed over her Azula realized that by forgiving Ty Lee she was not in fact just forgiving Ty Lee. She forgave Ty Lee for betraying her. She forgave Mai and even her mother for loving Zuko more. She forgave her brother for turning against her when she had given him a second life. She forgave her father for using her. And finally she forgave herself for everything.

Ty Lee looked down into the golden orbs that belonged to the almost-woman she had loved and saw it all. She pulled her Princess close and, with one breathless moment of hesitation, kissed the woman that she loved. Azula gently returned the kiss and the world stood still.

Finally they parted. Ty Lee's eyes now shone with something other than tears for once: pure unadulterated love. And she needed Azula to know it.

"I love you."

And Azula for her part simply smirked and said, "I know."

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So um that was quite a bit longer than my other pieces up here. I actually like being able to give people longer stuff to read, but sometimes in a chapter scenario I just feel like it's best to cut it off where it logically makes sense even if that means making it very short.

Anyhow...How did we like it? Perhaps you think Ty Lee was a lil OOC with the whole sneaking out in the middle of the night one night stand thing? I hoped I gave a credible explanation, but believe me I thought about it.

Congrats for making it this far and rest assured I will def be writting more horrendous crap like this in the future! Muhuhaha!

I'm rambling again...Oh well. Review if you like! However any reviews talking about the sexual orientation of this pairing will be traced back to the sender and I will personally see to it that that person is forced to sit the live action movie of ATLA. Ye have been warned!

PEACE FOOLS!


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